Friday, March 4, 2011

Music Blog #3 - My Favorite Punk Rock Releases of 2010

THE ESTRANGED - The Subliminal Man (Post-punk, gothy catchiness)LOW THREAT PROFILE - Product #2 (Music was recorded in 2000, vocals in 2010. Fast, hardcore. 15 songs in 10 minutes fast.) MARKED MEN - On/The Other Side 7" (These guys are the best pop-punk band of the 2000s, if you ask me. It's recommended to own everything by these guys.) NEON PISS - demo (Melodic punk. These guys are future stars.) OFF! - "The First Four EPs" (Keith Morris from Black Flag, Circle Jerks, etc. It sounds how you think it would. And that's good.) NIGHT BIRDS - demo, "Killer Waves", "Midnight Movies Tape", "s/t" (No album, just a demo and a bunch of 7"s. Surfy, edgy pop punk. This has the energy of 80's punk to me.)YOUNG OFFENDERS - "Leader of the Followers" LP (This is only on the H.M. list and not the Top Ten because I just got it and have only listened once. I'm not even sure what type of sub-genre this fits in. The video from their link is not from the LP but the video is so damn good. This is going to get listened to a lot!)

Whoa! Japanese hardcore! This is what I listen to when I'm on the road doing stand-up comedy and I'm in a town that I don't want to be in, surrounded by people I don't identify with. This is pure ugliness. I try to be a positive person, but sometimes we all need a release. This release is unrelenting and without a shred of melody. Just aggression, noise and feedback. That'll do, pig.

On paper, it should be easy to describe this band. There's two members - a guy and a girl. The guy plays drums and the girl sings and plays bass. Pretty simple. And yet, sometimes the most minimalist seeming are the most dynamic. Every time I listen to this album, I still get surprised. I forget about a time change or that she's going to be changing her vocal delivery from Kim Gordon to L7 in t-minus two seconds. I love the 80s/90s grunge influence that is happening in punk lately. And I don't mean Candlebox. This album's badass.

I'm going to be honest, there is a lot of hype around this band and I just didn't get it at first. People compared the singer to Germs legend Darby Crash and acted like they were the second coming of the Sex Pistols. But they just sounded like a crusty punk band from NYC to me. Nothing new. I grew up on punk, but I never gravitated towards the mohawked side of it. Plus, I already had my designated ugly album with Kriegshog. I like extra dark albums in doses, but not all the time. And that's how I felt about it until one day when I realized that he didn't sound like Darby Crash at all. He sounded like somebody else and I just couldn't put my finger on it. Who is it? Oh, it was on the tip of my tongue. Holy crap, he sounds like POPEYE!!! That's right, Popeye. Give it a listen. It's true! Now I don't think of the album as dark and ugly at all. It's just some post-spinach ass-whooping from our favorite sailor cartoon. And that's all it took to be on rapid rotation in my place. Well, blow me down.

Remember when I mentioned a tinge of grunge creeping into punk music? This is another example of that. These guys clearly listened to a lot of mid/late-80s SST records like Dinosaur Jr and Sonic Youth. I love the energy in the singer's voice. I can't wait to see what these guys do with a full-length. The song posted below is my favorite from the release. There's a slight Superchunk hookiness to it as well.

This band is ridiculous. Look and dress like NY/NJ versions of Lenny and Squiggy. They sound exactly like The Ramones or The Stooges, depending on the song. Oh, and a majority of their songs are about pizza. I honestly thought I was only going to listen to this once in my entire life and I find myself longing for it every day. It's so damn catchy. They even blatantly rip off hooks with no pretense and I still don't care. Check out their "I Want You" 7" as well, it may even be better. Here's one of their Stooges songs:

Hot damn, I love garage rock! If I didn't have a Ford Focus, this would surely result in about 100 speeding tickets. Sure, stuff like this isn't reinventing the wheel or anything, but neither is pizza. And I sure love pizza every time. (See pick #6). Every one of these songs is a ripper and gets my blood pumping. The perfect morning music. Who needs coffee? Just blast this.

These guys take the energy of 80's punk like The Dead Kennedys and mix it with the complexity and innovation of 90's Dischord Records. I can't say enough about this album. I am a sucker for girl vocals that, for lack of a better term, have balls. White Lung has that in spades. AND they have a music video! That's very impressive after sifting through this list of bands with Lastfm accounts for webpages.

And from Sweden, my #1 favorite punk album of 2010: Masshysteri's self-titled album. This is actually their second LP. The first was a little less poppy and more hardcore (and still highly recommended). Some people didn't like the change but I'm all for it. I love the post-punk vibe. Really, what does it for me is the infectiously melodic guitar leads that remind me of early Cure records on speed. All their lyrics are in Swede-talk and have crazy umlauts and other things I can't type on this computer. Like I said, they've gone more melodic since their first, but it's not watered down. I'm a sucker for hooks and this one is chock-full of them. Can't recommend it enough.

So those are my favorite punk albums of 2010. I used many resources throughout the year to keep up with the new music, like Maximum RocknRoll, Icoulddietomorrow and Styrofoam Drone (although they lean more toward indie rock.) Stay tuned for my favorite indie rock albums of 2010 next.